How I was Recruited into a Cult with Carli McConkey

0:04 This is Crappita Happy and I am your host, Cas Doune. I'm a clinical and coaching psychologist. I'm mindfulness meditation teacher and of course author of the Crappita Happy books. In this show, I bring you conversations with interesting, inspiring, intelligent people who are experts in their field and who have something of value to share that will help you feel less crappy and more happy. Welcome back to Craffita Happy. My guest this week is carl McConkey. Carlie was your average twenty one year old, finished university feeling a little bit unsure of her direction when she enrolled in a personal development course which ultimately ended up being the pathway into a New Age doomsday cult. She then went on to spend all of her twenties and half of her thirties trapped, and obviously spent many many years afterwards recovering.

1:07 Carli was courageous enough to write a book about her experience, which ultimately led to her being sued for defamation by the cult leader. And again Carl was brave enough to face her in court and to win that defamation case. I've been fascinated by the psychology of cults, like what leads people to join cults, why do they stay, how do they get involved for a long time, Which is why I was so interested to speak to a person who has actually had this experience and was willing to talk about what they went through. The other reason I'm really fascinated by this topic is because of the overlap that I see and that obviously exists between the psychology and the mindset of cults and conspiracy theories, and the tribalism that exists in politics these days, all of the US versus them mentality. I think that there is a lot here to be explored in more detail, because I think it's really easy to sit back and to hear a story like Carli's and to think, well, that would never be me. I would never be that foolish. I would never let myself get into that situation, almost victim blaming, but also other ring. Whereas I think if we step outside of the direct experience and actually look at some of the reasons why this happens. Our common human need for meaning, for a sense of identity, for a sense of belonging and purpose, our cognitive biases, our confirmation biases, the tribalism that we ourselves can get into. I just think there is something in this for all of us.

2:38 For now, I'm just really grateful to Carli for her courage and for her honesty in sharing her story with me. There is so much more to this story that we didn't go into. Let's hear Carl's story. Carlin McConkey, Welcome to the Crappy to Happy Podcast. Thank you, chas lovely to be here. Calli. You spent over a decade, many years in a cult, experiencing some pretty harrowing abuse, as we'll talk about in a minute. I'm really curious to go back to the beginning to understand where were you at in life generally and in terms of your psychology, you know, emotionally, when you first encountered this organization, Like what was your first experience of them?

3:23 I guess well, I had finished university in about the November December of the year before, and it was May of the following year, so it wasn't even sort of six months. And I had done communication at UNI public Relations, and I'd done an internship, and I just didn't know whether PR was for me, So I was very unsure about my direction. I had left school and gone to university in Country New South Wales at Bathurst, and so i'd been away from home for three years coming back and yeah, just very unsure about where I was at that stage. I was fairly sheltered, and I hadn't had a boyfriend yet, so you know, I was just I had a bit of low self esteem, to be honest.

4:09 And also at the end of my first year of Uni, I had quite a shock. My mom told me that she had adopted out a daughter as a baby and her daughter had come back in contact with her, and so I had a sister. So that was a fairly traumatic experience in hindsight, because you know, just knowing that i'd sort of been lied to all those years, even though of course it's not something that you would talk about. Yeah, just everything was quite unsettled, and I had a lot of ambition and wanted to make a difference in the world. I'd also been Catholic up until I was nineteen, and then I moved more into sort of the spiritual New Age and started investigating that and reading a lot of books, etc.

4:55 And so I went to the Mind, Body Spirit Festival in Sydney. I went to have a psyche reading. I'd had a couple before at UNI, and this particular psychic reader told me that to reach my potential and have great relationships, find my direction in life, etc. I should do this course called the Next Evolutionary Step. And she gave me a brochure and a tape and things like that and directed me to a stand at the Mind Body Spirit Festival. And when I went there, that's where I found out about this particular course, which is really what I know now to be the recruitment process that they went through at that time doing psychic readings and healings at the Mind Body Spirit Festival. So I took chattered with some people understand, and they told me that there was a free stage one seminar at the Hilton Hotel, which sounded very legitimate and promising in the June. So I went to that and then heard the woman who was very charismatic at the front, who had designed the programs, who ended up being the cult leader. She got people up who'd on the program and they all gave testimonials, et cetera, and then straight away I just signed up to do the first course, and that was in the July.

6:08 So you were just out of Uni, you're like twenty twenty one. That's just such a familiar kind of a story. You know, I've been to the Mind, Body Spirit Festival in Sydney. I've probably had a psychic greeting there's Yeah, but that's so relatable. When you went to that first introductory session, Yes, and then you chose to go on and do one of their courses. Yes, you took your mom. I did. I actually took my mom and my sister, my half sister. You know, they wanted to come and support me. You know, my mom actually said at the time, just to make sure it's not a cult, even though cults weren't very well known back then. I remember her actually saying that. And we did the first program, and that was at a university in Sydney called mcquarie University, so again, you know, supposedly very legitimate place. It was a Thursday night, Friday night after work. It went to like eleven pm at night, and then you had to be back on the weekend on the Saturday and Sunday at nine am, so full day Saturday, full day Sunday, and then the Monday night was the graduation as such.

7:08 And yeah, Essentially, what cults do is they recruit you right coercively and deceptively. So you know, I thought that I was doing this self development program that was a bit new age and that would help me reach my potential. But once they get you in, then they do what we call mind controlled techniques. So that whole sort of five night, two day course was all long sessions where this woman up the front, the designer of the programs, would talk and lecture to us about all wonderful things doing, you know, how to become psychic. She spoke about crystal, she spoke about healing the planet. We did a lot of meditation, We even did chanting. We did dancing every time we came in, so you're in this really hypermood.

7:57 We were put onto a vegan diet and juicing fresh fruit juice about a leader, I think it was every day. There's also techniques called sleep deprivation and sensory deprivation. So our sleep deprivation was as I said, getting home, and she gave us exercises that we had to do. We had to listen to her meditation takes, and then the next morning we had to get up early and do lots of the juicing and get our food ready and things like that, so already your sleep is lacking. At that point, the sensory overload was just so many things were happening on that course. We went through all these processes. The biggest thing was what she termed accessing. She said that we had to clear our secular memory from this lifetime, our past lifetimes, and our ancestors, so that we could make a better world for our children, that we would get our health better and reach that potential that we were there to do. We had about eighty people on the course, and to do accessing, you had she brought out these big black mats that were about six foot by four foot, those big gymnasts mats, and there was eighty people just banging and yelling and screaming and crying and all that sort of thing. So it was really confronting for me. And yeah, there was one point where you know, I was huddled up with my mum in a corner and then the charismatic leader who became the cult leader, said something like, you know, why are you doing that. You need to take responsibility for yourself, And already she was separating me from my mum, so you know,

9:27 in cult structures from the very beginning, it's divide and conquer, separate you from your family, your friends, and just really hone you on relying on that cult leader for everything. You know, you no longer rely on yourself. You look to them for all your answers to everything. Yeah, so there's a lot about that that almost can sound valid, some of those things, but then there's all of this other stuff interwoven exactly. And then what happened was at the end of that course, because our systems or our bodies and our mind emotions were just everywhere, like we felt a lot lighter because we'd gone through all of that sort of purging of emotions and things like that, we're at such a heightened stage.

10:13 But we also still had a lot of fear, and we still had that feeling of sort of heaviness as well. And she said things like, to evolve, you need to continue to do these programs and I can help you, you know, I am the way. And so that was the July, and then I signed up for a course for September which was called University Healing, which was at her property in northern New South Wales, and that was a Friday night and all weekend course, which I did. I did that by myself. Then I signed up to one in the October, which was only a month later called the Final Step, and that was where the real mind control techniques were really supplanted and just thoroughly the foundation was laid, because in that one it was terrifying.

10:57 We met at a university in Brisbane. The cult leader had said that you know, you only do this course once and you have to put everything into it. We weren't told anything about the courses. We were never told anything about the courses, and you were told that specifically that you were not allowed to tell anyone else what happened on each course. So we arrived there, the cult leader and all of her support team were standing at the front. They weren't smiling. They were sort of yelling and screaming. The cult leader was yelling, she was asking for our id, our wallets. We couldn't. We had to hand everything over and eventually, after hours and hours, what was probably about five hours, we were put We were marched out in a line onto a blackened out bus and we drove. We had no watches, we didn't know what time it was, we didn't know what was happening.

11:43 We drove on a bus all blackened out for hours and hours, and eventually we weren't allowed to go to the toilet. She said that we could only go to the toilet when she told us we could so already. That was terrifying for me. And we ended up getting there to this property which was in the middle of nowhere. We had no idea where we were. Obviously mobile phones didn't exist then, but yeah, we didn't have any way to get home or contact anyone. So we were there, and then it was more lectures, more meditating, more chanting. We only had somewhere up to seventeen hours sleep, so we only had a couple of hours sleep per night, and we went without food for twenty four hours. Lots of yelling at us. She made us yell and scream at each other, bring issues up with each other, and there was just a whole heap of different stuff that really solidified those my control techniques. And I really believe that even from the first stage one seminar, I was already hooked and I was already indoctrinated. But if you weren't by that stage, the final step definitely did that.

12:42 You talk about things like making you stand on a stage naked and talk about what you don't like about your body, have people tell you what they don't like about your body. These are the kinds of humiliation tactics. Basically, I just want people listening to understand the kinds of things that you were expo It wasn't just food deprivation, and it wasn't just like sleep deprivation. There were these very personal humilist tags humiliation. And so you can imagine a property where all we see is some trees and it sort of dirt all around us, and they had tents set up. There was two of us staying in a tent and we'd be listening to lectures into late into the night when it was totally dark, and then you know, we'd go to bed and we didn't know because we didn't have a watch, but two hours later we'd be woken up really suddenly, and then we had to get up and start it all over again. We used to have to do this run, and then after the run, yet we had a strip naked and we had to jump into this pond and we weren't allowed to get out of the pond until the colt leader told us we were allowed to and the time would only start when the last person got in, so all of us were just you know, peddling in this pond that I believe had leeches and we couldn't even see under it. It was dark, so that was terrifying.

13:54 And then, as I mentioned, we were not allowed to go to the toilet until she'd we had sort of five minutes, and then there was only three portaloos and eighty people had to go to the toilet within you know, a five minute time frame, and if you missed out, you had to wait till the next one. It was all about, yeah, fear, humiliation. There was a process where, yeah, one night, in the middle of the night, when it was dark, we were in the big Marquee and there was a stage and first of all, we had our swimmers on, and then she said that if you can stand naked in front of people, you can do anything, you know, and we all got up and did it, one after the other, and yeah, it was complete humiliation.

14:36 I just remember sweating and feeling horrible. And you had people who were from about seventeen years of age to like eighty years of age, men and women, boys and girls. Yeah, we had to say what we liked about our body, what we didn't, and then the people in the audience could come in as well. So yeah, they're just a few of the things that happened. So and all of this you've been told too that you're not to discuss with anybody, so there's no talking to your parents about this or getting anybody else's opinion about whether this. Yeah, and I think then at the end we were told to bring like a party outfit as well, and that got taken at the beginning, and then right at the end, after you've been through this, you know, seven nights and eight days of hell, then the last night is this big party, and of course you know you're happy in this, that and the other, and you're shell shocked, you know, what theF just happened to us. But it's that kind of duality as well, where you go through hell and then you have this one big party for one night and then it's like hell again. And that's kind of what happened through the whole process of those years.

15:38 It was you know, the colleader might say one nice thing to you, but then you know she'll say one hundred really horrible things about you, and it's always this uphill battle and struggle to climb out of where you've been, and. What was your kind of mental state coming out the other side of that, because you went back again, right, So what's happening for you out of the other side of that horrible. I just think that I always felt like I had a lot of problems. You know, I was always self reflecting, trying to better myself. You know, I was a bit overweight back then, and I knew I wasn't perfect, and I really had this internal drive to keep going and evolve and get to you know, this enlightened state and I felt better, but I still felt very heavy and I had a lot of fear. So I knew that I had to keep going. And that just is what happened the whole way through. You know, I never felt like I was on the other side. And I think that's what the cult leader and cults do is there's always they're always dangling this carrot to say, you know, you're not there yet, you need to do more, go hi higher with your evolvement, et cetera. That's what they do the whole time. You know, they love bomb you.

16:51 You know, the cult leader would verbally sort of abuse us and put us down, and then you know, she might lift you up one and then put you down a number of times, and it's just that game. And so you're never in a good place. And she said that you need to access the heavy emotions before you get to the lighter ones. And you know, we would just access the same thing over and over again, all these heavy emotions, and obviously there was no light ones, so you know, it really was an ongoing process. What you just describe sounds so similar to essentially being in a relationship with a narcissistic abuser. This constant erosion of your self esteem and your sense of self worth and then these like little, you know, crumbs of positive reinforcement that you then latch onto and you become just almost obsessed with getting more of that positive reinforcement because you're feeling so shit about yourself solutely, and then the other person who can make you feel better out there, they've told you and doctrinated you that they are the way.

17:53 Yes, And when we're educating about cults, we always talk about the one on onine relationship, which is when you're with an or even a psychopath. So yeah, it's exactly the same thing coecive control, but on a grander scale, I guess, because you know, cults are always that the term cult. You know, people always either think that anyone who's been in a cult is an idiot, they got themselves in there, it's their fault. But you can just look at it as a gang mentality or peer pressure that you have that one on one, but it's on a grander scale, and you've got not only the cult leader that you have to contend with, but you've got a whole group of her supporters that you know, if you put one foot wrong, then you're going to have the whole of the group sick onto you, and not just one person. So I was going to say, yeah, I'm not going to say what's worse. You know, one on one is really horrible, horrible, but then also the group dynamic is is horrible as well in a grander scale.

18:47 Yeah, I was actually going to mention that so with the one on one abuse and not that that's what we're here to talk about. Yes, but it's kind of you with your own head working out, am I the crazy one? This is the gas lighter thing is right like in my crazyes? Whereas in a cult. You've got a whole lot of people around who are they're enamored with this person, like they're telling you that this is amazing, and almost reinforcing that it is your issue, if you've got the issue, because we're all doing great, exactly. I'm just curious to know, just going back, So what was your mum's perception, I guess of that first weekend, and did she have any opinion about you choosing to go on to the next and the next at that time.

19:32 I don't remember her actually saying anything about the fact that I was continuing. I know that my sister didn't want to do anything else. My sister had grown up pretty street wise, so she kind of clashed with the cult leader. I was more sheltered and you know, probably a mummy and daddy's girl, and I was very naive. I didn't I certainly wasn't street wise, and so the red flags and even all that fear that I was feeling, and even towards the cult leader, I wasn't recognizing and I wasn't admitting that, Hey, yeah, my gut feeling, my intuition is telling me that she's a really scary person. And I was turning it around to say, just to believe her in the fact that she was saying, if you are feeling like this, yes, and I can help you to not feel like that in the future, and I can help you have your dreams come true. So I don't remember my mum ever saying no, you shouldn't do this, and she never did do that. But back then, in the nineties, late nineties and even the early two thousands, cults, you know, the weird and wonderful cults over seas like Waco and Jonestown, etc. They were very extreme that people didn't correlate what happened there to what was happening to us and other groups in Australia, so there still wasn't a word for it, you know. Fast forward to about two thousand and seven, when a lot of people had left this our cult, there was people who started speaking up about it, and that's when they, you know, termed

21:05 it a cult. And my parents heard, oh, yes, this is a cult, and then they educated themselves by going to a cult support group and things like that. Back then, yeah, I was really on my own journey. So at that point you came out of that week, but you did kind of get away and you traveled overseas for a bit, and eventually you ended up back. Yes, and you signed on to a much longer and intensive program. That's correct, because I couldn't afford to do the year long program, which was called Personal Mastery, a metaphysical counseling certificate to become a counselor, because I know, so you know, I've done lots of courses to become a psychic reader, a metaphysical healer, and I wanted to do the counseling course because I wanted to be a counselor and help people and heal people. So that was a year long and I couldn't afford it. At the end of that year, after the final step, so an opportunity to a friend of a friend came up to go in nanny in Italy.

21:57 So I did that. But while I was there, I was still complete indoctrinated, So I was still running every day and screaming into a face cloth. You can imagine around Tuscany and the vineyards, and you know, me running around with a cloth, yelling and screaming. It was crazy. And because I was kind of still on a vegan vegetarian diet, I couldn't even enjoy all of the beautiful Italian food. They didn't really know what to feed me. So it was just shocking. You know. It just shows that it doesn't matter whether you're at a distance from the cult. If you are indoctrinated, you are still you know, your mind is completely there no matter where you are in the world. So when I got back, I started working in a public relations firm and I stepped onto the year long course and that was just again just another level. And we had about twenty nine people and there was lots of a book assignments and we had to juice two leaters of juice every day, stick to a vegan diet, no sugar, no bread, no salt, that type of thing. So you're looking at food deprivation, sleep deprivation because we were running around crazily trying to do these assignments and pass books on and more of the mind control techniques were utilized. By the end of that, she would be up at the room with her support team at the front, and it was really if you can imagine Jerry Springer like, she would purposely create drama and issues with the group and she would just watch it and feed off that, so that's what it was all about. To her. It was all about drama. And because you would know, with Nazism and whether it's psychopathy,

23:31 they're so dead inside and have no emotions, no empathy, so really they need to be entertained and get attention, and that's all that she was doing the whole time. So you know, it just went on and on, and I completed course after course after course, and then things just progressed where she was finally actually on a current affair and accused of being a cult leader and financially abusing people, etc. And her reputation really went down. And then extraordinarily she decided to become a psychologist in the year two thousand so that she could rectify her reputation. But she didn't really think that through because from that point on she had to be accountable to our you know, it's called apraheath Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, So before she was not accountable to anyone. You know, she'd said that she was a counselor or that she was teaching people how to counsel, but she'd never done a counseling course.

24:28 She said that she was qualified in alternate systems and healing and relationship counseling things like that. But her degree was actually in agriculture, So I think that's another thing that's really important for red flags and just for the public to know about. When you are getting involved with anyone, whether it's an organization, a group, a meetup, even a person, look them up online and do your research because in this day and age, no one can get away with anything. So you will find a comment or review or just something somewhere about that particular group, person or organization, and yeah, you just I think the other thing is you can't be naive anymore, and you can't allow your children to grow up sheltered.

25:16 That is a very good point. And going back, you didn't necessarily have the benefit of the Internet, like you You actually didn't have access to Google to be able to see who this person was or what other people have said. You only had what was right in front of you. Right, so that we now have a lot more access to information. I mean, still people still get scammed and get sucked into these things, but you were really at a disadvantage at that time. Yes, and then around two thousand and seven, which if I'm not mistaken was around when the Internet was really coming into its own I could be mistaken, but that's when there. Was Facebook started then it did. Yeah, so that's when some blogs started appearing on a cult education websit, Rick Ross if anyone's heard about him.

26:02 And so that's when people started just telling the truth about this cult leader and what had happened to them, calling her a narsiss and a psychopath, and just everything that she'd actually done, the physical abuse, the verbal abuse, the financial abuse, and then she ended up suing or trying to sue those people. So after a current affair, at least half or more of her base of cult members actually disappeared because they woke up. And then her true believers, including myself, stayed with her, supported her and defended her. I ended up working for her for ten years, and you know, she blamed she used me as a scapegoat on a number of occasions. You know, the Australian Taxation Office came in to investigate her and she blamed that on me and then I had to repay her money for that and that took about four years. And you know, this is where I hope I'm not jumping head, but where the human trafficking and slavery comes in, because that was debt bondage and you know, slavery. She didn't pay me for any of the work I did. I think it's it's great that governments and authorities are now looking at cults not only as these you know, extremist religious organizations and people are idiots and they you know, it's their fault, but they're looking at it as human trafficking and slavery because that is exactly what the legislation states.

27:22 What we went through was that, and unfortunately for me and my peers, the legislation for human trafficking slavery wasn't amended until about March two thousand and twelve, So anyone that was a victim after that time can really go to the police and get hopefully justice. Just while I'm on it, you know, if anyone does escape from a cult, don't go to the media and just you know, tell them what happened. Please go to the authorities. First, go to the police. Report exactly what happened or the abuse, whatever it was, financial, psychological, sexual, It's really important to report it to the police first.

28:07 You did end up working for her, You were quite keen to get more involved into the organization. You took a job, then she didn't pay you. She never had the money to pay you. Yeah, and then somehow or other she also ended up figuring out that you owed her money, so you were indebted, not just for the ATO stuff. She manufactured all of these other reasons why you apparently owed her money. That's correct. For example, she went on a ski trip with her children and her nephew, and I organized it, and then she made claims when she got back that I didn't book transfers or her accommodation right on the ski slopes, you know, this, that and the other. And so I had to pay her ten thousand dollars for that.

28:51 So you know, I had to pay her five. Just made that up, just decided that was worth ten thousand dollars for a penalty exactly. And you know, and people say, well, if you weren't getting paid, you know, how are you giving her mad? Yeah, So I was working second and third job, so I was waitressing, or I worked at a cinema on the Gold Coast for four years. Later on, I worked at McDonald's, you know. And by the way, at that point, I thought I was only worthy of working at McDonald's. She ended up buying a guest house and a beauty seller down at Barham Bay during my time with her, and I was cleaning the guest house and I was performing you know, massages and petticills and things like that. So it was all about her. She would go out on her boat or surfboarding with her partner at the time, and she it was all about us doing all the work for her, and she would just be reaping the benefits financially and having her free time off, and we were just slaves. I mean I was working, honestly, up to twenty two hours a day, seven days a week.

29:51 In the last few years. There was times when I was only having two hours sleep, and you know, there was a few nights that I didn't have any sleep. That's why I always say it's up to twenty two hours a day. So it's just incredible. I think people don't understand how someone like myself and others could actually survive like this or do this. Now. The bit that you missed was at some point that you got into a relationship with somebody who actually wasn't involved with the organization, but he did become involved. Did he have any red red flags at the beginning or was he kind of happy? Did he consider this to be a positive thing because you thought it was a positive thing, Like what was that because you then had two kids?

30:33 Two three three? Yeah, three three kids while you were doing all of these jobs at work and being abused and having no money and also had children. That's correct. He actually had done the first program, the next evolutionary stuff, and he actually went to school with a girl who was on my year long course, so and he was living with her, and that's how he knew about the courses. So he had actually done the first one. And then you know, I know that if it wasn't for me, he probably would have left the group a lot earlier, and particularly after we did have children, you know, after every child, things escalated and he actually left for a little while. And a lot of the premise for why I was doing the courses was to cleanse my cellular memory for my children and also the planet and myself. So once children were on the scene, that was another leverage for the cult leader to keep us there. And she would always tell us that we needed to continue to evolve for the sake of our children.

31:34 What was the turning point what caused you to eventually leave? As I mentioned, she had been suing a lot of people, including three other ex members and also my parents for defamation, so she needed to raise funds for all of her legal cases. So she was under a lot of pressure, and so there wasn't too many of us left, but we were again working on her accounts, and I was only having two hours sleep and night. I had three children by that point. My ex husband now he had left two years before at this point and was just sort of seeing me once a week and the kids once a week to help look after them. So there was a lot of pressure for me. She ended up physically battering me again in a very frenzied attack, like she punched me in the face, gave me a black eye.

32:28 I think it was the twenty seventh of December, and then on the twenty ninth she really beat the crap out of me and peeped me to the ground. I was screaming in my face, pulling my hair out, all that type of thing, kicking me as she did, and I had just really got to the point where I just could not cope anymore. She was calling me a con artist that I wasn't paying enough to her and everyone else, and that I was conning everyone else. And I had got to the point where just physically, spiritually, emotionally, mentally, I could not cope anymore. And you know, logically, I had worked out that I couldn't actually keep going like I'd always been trying to manifest money. And you know, she got me onto the sett link single mother's pension and family Assistants, et cetera at one point, and that money obviously went directly to her, and so I'd been on that for about four years, and then I've been working at McDonald's and other side jobs. But I worked out that what she was proposing for me to give her and everyone else financially, i'd only have fifty dollars at the end of the week for food and putting my kids into you know, long daycare pay for that and just things like that. So logically my brain actually realized, I'm not going to be able to do this anymore.

33:45 And there was just one day where she called me down to her house and I thought she was going to bash me up again, and she was just screaming at me and telling everyone, you know, not to speak to me anymore, and I was being traded like dirt and my children she was started to say that my children were liars. At that point, they were eight, five and two and a half. And Yeah, basically, when I walked out of the house, she hadn't physically assaulted me, but I thought, it's only amount of time. And I just thought, look, I just have to I have to go because I can't do anything. And I just made this sort of bet with myself and I ended up walking down the hill thinking that everyone would find me and follow me, but they didn't, and I just filled my car up with everything and went and picked up my three children from daycare and vacation care. And yeah, basically drove to my ex husband's work and just started speaking to him. And because I had made that decision, even though I was still indoctrinated and sort of talking myself in, just saying, you know, I'm going to tell her that I'm not going to, you know, work through the night. I'm only going to work during the day, this and the other. But once I was with my ex husband in a safe place with my three children, within five minutes, my brain just started, you know, wow, just I was out of that survivor mode and it just started functioning and I thought, oh my god, she is a cult leader and that is a cult and then that was it. So it's long and short of it.

35:08 Yeah, I mean there is so much that you haven't even mentioned to do with the criminal activity, the money that she was illegally collecting on behalf of loads of like, there's so much. Yeah, people can read get the book if they want all of that. Yes, But Carly, when you came to your senses basically at that day and then you left, what was the process for your healing to recover from that? It was? It was a huge process. And just the recovery for people who've been in a cult it takes years and years. You know, some people estimate that however long you've been in the cult will be how long it will take to get over it. And you know, I was in there for thirteen and a half years, and honestly, not until like five years, ten years down the track you start to feel normal. First of all, you go through things like you know, I caught up with all of my school friends and some uni friends that I hadn't seen for that whole time, and you know, the school friends. I divulged to them stuff that had happened, and you know, they just look at you as if you're like a weird creature and don't understand anything. And you know, they never ever called me back, and I never saw them again. So you've lost all your friends.

36:17 You know. I had a family member that didn't speak to me for three years, and then after that barely spoke to me. You know. I've tried to get therapy a few times, and there was one psychologist who said about five times, oh, look, this is really overwhelming, you know, overwhelming because I was just verbally darting for like an hour. Even psychologists we find that they just can't understand and really help us because what we have experience is so extreme. But I ended up doing EMDR, which I found was really good. I did that about three times back then, and then I ended up doing it more after the court case. I thought I'd better go back and just tidy up just the last finishing touches of what was going on. And I did that about three times in three weeks, and does bring up a lot. I really found that helpful, but it is very it just brings up everything straight away and it is a lot to deal with. Even though I had moved through so much emotionally and process so much for me, it brought up a lot, so I can't imagine what it would do just a person with just some some p TNST. I joined a cult support group called Cult Information and Family Support KIFTS, which my parents had been involved with, and that was really helpful because you get to be around people, either parents and loved ones who have had people in a cult or still do, and you get to talk to ex cult members, and I think it's really important.

37:35 That is one really big thing that I recommend is that you know, no matter whether you've been in a cult or with a narcissist or something like that in a gang, really hang around people and seek support from those who have experienced it. Yeah. And you know, just I hadn't had a job. I mentioned that I worked at McDonald's. Like when I got out of the cult, I was too scared to get a job for almost two years, and I thought I was only you know, I could own work on the front counter of McDonald's. That's how I felt. And I you know, had a university degree and had so much promise at UNI and afterwards that wasn't fulfilled. So I had to build up my self esteem again as far as my career is concerned, make new friends, and which you know didn't happen too much.

38:19 And you know, I guess when you've been in a cult situational with a narciss sister or a psychopath, you really don't trust people, so you have to work out how to set boundaries and learn how to do that for the first time in your life. And I had believed in Jesus, in God and been very religious when I was up to nineteen, and then in the New Age I was still very spiritual. I was very spiritual the whole time. And I am now that I really turned away from, you know, even saying Jesus or God, so that that's a shame in a way, because I really was so scarred that I cut connection even just with those particular words. But now I'm sort of starting to get back to just really realizing that everything I went through. You know, cults, they will have different themes and different recruitment methods, and you know, they might be Bible based groups or whatever it is. Mine was a New Age group because I believed in the New Age and I still do. So it's a shame that a cult leader or an artist will really work on you so much that you lose your innate self and you really have to try and rebuild that and rebuild those connections and those beliefs again. Yeah, but look, it's taken a long time. And you know, I guess also going into the cult when I was twenty one. You know, I didn't come out until I was thirty five, so I lost all of my twenties and half of my thirties.

39:45 That was something that I had to accept. CALLI how much faith do you actually have in psychologists given that your cult leader is currently a registered psychologist in Australia and still registered with OPRA. Exactly, I. I mean, I don't want to say anything too bad. I certainly don't think I can be sued for defamation for this, but I don't have faith in OPRAH. My court leader is actually also registered with the HCPC in the UK, and I've communicated with them. I did write a book about my experiences and self published it in twenty seventeen, and then I was subsequently sued for defamation and I spent over six years defending myself and I went a trial from September December twenty twenty three, and I stood up in the court and ran the whole trial myself. It was over ten weeks and on the first of March I ended up winning the court case with twelve invitations ruled absolutely true and four invitations ruled substantially true. And it was a scathing judgment of the cult leader and that the Supreme Court judge called her an urrant liar and a cult leader, and she ended up appealing. And obviously I was researching all of the law myself. I only spoke to a couple of lawyers very briefly at either of the court case. And you know, I just happened upon the legislation about that you can get an appeal dismissed for want of prosecution if you know it's prejudiced against the defendant or if she's taking too much time, and there was a couple of other things, and miraculously, after three and a half months,

41:17 I got the appeal dismissed and that was on the eighth of July. And so both those judgments against the cult leader I sent to APRA and the hc PC, and they're hardly corresponding with me at all, and basically I believe that they're waiting for a criminal verdict. You know, I've handled all over all of my evidence to the Aussuran Federal Police. I was very determined to speak the truth and seek justice because no one had managed to do it. She had sued multiple organizations a yeah, and you know my parents and ex cult members as well as university and you know, a current affair, et cetera. So she'd been extremely militigious. For some reason, I felt like I had the balls to take her to court and win, and I did at the end, after I won the appeal. You know, I'm still determined to take it right to the end criminally, but really I've had to just step back and say, you know, it's up to the police. Now, it's up to APRA and the HCPC to do their job. I mean, the Supreme Court Judge and the Chief Justice have stated that it's absolutely true that she battered myself and others, incited others to batter others, that she committed sexual assault, that she is a criminal, even it's substantially true that she's a violent extremist, that she's likely to suffer from narcissistic and borderline personality disorder.

42:40 There were some big things that I proved, so surely an absolutely true statement is as good as beyond reasonable doubt. But APRA and the hc PC have not taken action and she's still able to practice as a psychologist in both Australia and the UK. I just need to have a little chuckle about that. I mean, to be honest, Carlie, I'm a psychologist, and the fear that exists among the psychology profession I mean, people are terrified that any little thing that they do, they're going to get called up to arper. That's why I had as a contextual imputation that she's likely to be a psychopath, because she had put in her imputations in her statement of claim that you know, I reduced her reputation stating that she's likely to suffer from Nazism and bayline personality disorder. I put in the contextual imputation that she's likely to be a psychopath. The judge actually put in his judgment that she definitely has a psychological disorder, whether it be you know, Nazism or you know psychopathy, that type of thing. He actually put it in the judgment. You know, even that as far as APRA's concerned, you know, I know with their laws section fifty one, I think it is that if they have some sort of personality disorder or they're a criminal, that they should be struck off. But it still hasn't happened.

43:53 Many people who have similar experience to what you had, when they come out like they never talk about it. There's a level of shame involved. But you've been really open, has it been. Do you think that's been helpful for you to talk about it and get your story out there. Yeah, it's interesting because, as I mentioned, I was an executive assistant and I never mentioned it to anyone right up until I was about to publish my book, but so I always kept it hidden from my work colleagues. I definitely wanted to tell the truth about her, because I was always a person, even in the cult, that told the truth. And even though I did some what would be deemed horrible things in the cult, myself, I was prepared to wear that because I know that I was indoctrinated and it probably wouldn't have happened if I wasn't in the cult, and I had to wear the fact that things might come back against me, but I was prepared to be totally truthful and honest so that I could tell the entire truth about the cult leader and what happened in the cult. When people are going to expose someone else, they have to be prepared for any backlash against them. And I just believed so much in telling the truth about her because for years and years, like over twenty thirty years now, people have been trying to tell the truth, but she's been trying to censor them with litigation. So, as I said, I don't know why, but for some reason, I just felt like I had the courage and the boldness to take her on because

45:26 innately I've had that strength. I mean, funnily enough, during the courses, you get to know what your name means, and my name, Carli means strong woman and free women. And it's funny because I use things like, you know, the goddess Indian goddess Krli. Throughout the court case, I had a picture of Carli up on the wall, and during the trial, I was for the first time calling on you no Archangel Michael and Jesus Christ and God and relying on all of whatever I had access to to get me through that because every day I had to face her from memory, I think I cross examined her on the stand for seventeen days. Oh my god, Yeah, so I know. And we'd moved into a larger core room, into a small quorum, so she was literally like a meter and a half away from me, and I had to face this woman who had basically persecuted me for thirteen and a half years and bashed the shit out of me. I had to face her, and I had to question.

46:16 Her and listened to her lie. Absolutely. Oh that was just the major thing. Like luckily, my mum actually went and she was there with me every single day for we were down in Hoba for three months and we just could not get over how much she lied and exaggerated, like it was just beyond a joke. But that was great because you know, I knew that I had to ask her questions about things and then and get her to lie, and then I would bring out the actual evidence. And that's what actually won me this court case, is because I'm an executive assistant and I have kept up myself. Yeah, I used all my organizational abilities and all the evidence I had. I'd kept everything so I had the evidence, and that's why you know, I know a lot of people don't when they cases is because they don't have enough evidence.

47:02 You know, you're relying on what people say and reputation and how they come across in the court room. But I had tended over four hundred documents and videos and audio. So yeah, good on you, good on you. I mean to represent yourself and then face her. I am conscious of the time, but I did want to say too, Like you got out of the cult, you would think that is the step where you start to that's the point where you can start just getting on with your life. But like you said, she has continued in her capacity now as a psychologist, has even threatened to report you to children's services to have your children taken away. Like she basically continues to try to exert whatever influence and power she has to control you, even once you're out.

47:47 That's correct. She used the tool of whenever anyone escaped, because she knew they would go to the police. She went to the police first, so whenever anyone left, she would report them to the police for either stealing or being abusive to their kids, that type of thing. That's why it's really important when anyone has had physical sexual financial abuse to go and report it to the police. And I and see, I didn't even report it until after the newspaper articles came out. I don't even know why. It's ridiculous, like we just think that we should just either get on with our lives or we'll go to the media first. It's crazy. You need to report everything that happens to you. And here's where the education comes in.

48:28 You know, you need to realize that no one is allowed to physically hurt you, sexually hurt you, financially hurt you, coerce you, be misleading, and coerce you to do something or say something that you don't really want to. Yeah, it is up to parents and the community to educate everyone and particularly our children about the types of people that are out in our community. And yeah, when something happens, to just report it. Cally, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me today. I'm sure it's not easy to talk about it all over again, but I'm really in awe to be honest and appreciate you telling your story to help other people and to educate other people. Credit to you.

49:13 Thank you, thanks very much, Cass, Thank you so much. Crappy to Happy is created and produced by me, Cass Done. If you enjoy the show, please with the follow button wherever you listen to ensure you never miss an episode. Share with a friend to get me into the ears of more lovely listeners, and I would love for you to leave a five star rating and review. Thank you so much for being here and I cannot wait to catch you next week for another fabulous episode of Cracket A happy